


The Burning Truth

by FoiblePNoteworthy



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Forgot to mention that before sorry, Gen, Magic Revealed, Past Child Abuse, and no one else did it for me so, dramtic talking about his magic, i just really wanted these words to exist ya know, i should come back and edit this more sometime, i write this in one sitting, idk what to tell you, legalise weed/magic!, merlin talks about his childhood in ealdor, they good but they trash, this is one of those dramatic trash ones, you kow the ones
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-03
Updated: 2020-07-03
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:55:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25058848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FoiblePNoteworthy/pseuds/FoiblePNoteworthy
Summary: “My Father was a sorcerer,” Merlin said into the silence.
Relationships: Merlin (Merlin) & Everyone
Comments: 47
Kudos: 561
Collections: Finished111





	The Burning Truth

“My Father was a sorcerer,” Merlin said into the silence.

They – the Knights, Arthur, and Gwen – had been arguing over the table in Arthur’s chambers for close to an hour about the laws. Whether they were right. Whether they needed changing. It wasn’t a discussion any of them wanted to have, but it needed to be done all the same.

Percival and Gwaine had lived in lands where magic was merely frowned upon, and spoke of the many useful things they’d seen, the kind souls they’d met. They didn’t flinch away from talking about the curses they’d spotted on a daily basis within those lands either.

Leon and Arthur had felt the kindness of magic themselves, but were far more familiar with its claws. A few oddballs in a crowd of sinners were suffering under Arthur’s laws - neither of them would do those people the disrespect of denying it - but it was their duty to protect as many of their citizens as possible. If harming the kind sorcerers protected his citizens from the evil ones, that was a price they had to pay, they argued.

Gwen told them about the friend she’d lost to magic; told them of how she’s watched Morgana fall into madness and hatred as the magic corrupted her. Perhaps, she’d said, these kind sorcerers were not yet lost. It would be to their benefit to stop them, before it was too late.

Merlin had remained silent until a lull came into the conversation, and then he spoke.

“My father was a sorcerer,” he said a second time, when all eyes had turned to him. “And he was a good man.”

His eyes were fixed on the table, unmoving. He did not react to their oppressive gaze. His hands twitched where they were folded in front of him on the table.

“My father,” he told them, “had served in Uther’s court. They were friends, I think. I never had the chance to ask him the details, and I couldn’t exactly ask Uther,” a hint of a laugh slipped into his voice, stark against his bone white skin.

“When the Slaughter came,” his eyes darted up to meet Arthur’s, just for a moment, “It was ‘The Purge’, to you, but it was a Slaughter to them – my mother would house sorcerers fleeing Camelot. Gaius would send them to her. She was only meant to look after them for a few days, feed them and treat their injuries before they moved on to meet up with families across the border.

“Uther had slain all my father’s kin. My kin. So he had nowhere to go after my mother. He stayed with her, for a while, but Uther’s men caught up with him and he had to leave. My mother realised she was pregnant a few weeks later. He found out about me a few years ago, just before he died.”

He glanced up at the silent table. He’d expected one of them to have interrupted by now, but they were silent. Listening. As much as Merlin played the fool, he’d shown them often enough in the past that when he had something to say, it was worth listening to.

He met Arthur’s eyes, felt his heart slow at the small nod he gave. He wasn’t sure he hadn’t placed his head on the chopping block, still, but he was in too deep now.

He might as well give the whole story – or most of it, at least.

“Ealdor was a strange place when I was a boy,” he told them, “Flowers would bloom all through the winter. A tree’s growth could be measured every day and a difference would be found. The crops were always healthy. The greatest storms would never damage a home. No one was ever sick. And…”

He took a breath.

“And lighting struck whenever I had a tantrum.”

The table was silent, motionless.

He kept his eyes down, and talked faster.

“My mother was young and healthy and alone, so I was left with the elderly while she worked the fields. The oldest man in the village was named Marvin, and he couldn’t move very quickly but his voice was soft and his hands were gentle. I was rarely upset in his care, which the whole village appreciated. I don’t remember him very well, I was young when he…”

Merlin frowned, “I might have told this bit out of order.

“People travelled through Ealdor every now and then, and no one could help but notice our unnatural good fortune. The Slaughter was at its height, and Uther was offering money to anyone with information about sorcerers. So the Bloodcloaks came.

“I don’t know if anyone outside our village called them Bloodcloaks, but the older boys liked to scare me by telling me about them – they told me they killed sorcerers and used their blood as dye. Every time they caught me they told me a different way that I would be killed by them. Looking back, I’m not sure that it wasn’t their way to ty and protect me – they were always terrifying, but I suppose that’s the point. ‘Don’t use your magic-‘” there, he’d said the word, he’d told them it was magic, that he had it, that he’d used it, and there wasn’t a knife at his throat _yet_ \- “’Or the Bloodcloaks will get you.’ It certainly helped to motivate me.”

He paused to take a breath, couldn’t force himself to look up and see if they hated him now. No one seemed to have moved since he started talking.

“So,” he repeated, “The Bloodcloaks came. It was the dead of Winter – or so I’ve been told, I was still quite young at the time. Too young to remember much clearly, except for the red.

“It was the dead of winter and the flowers were in bloom and the rabbits in the forest hadn’t hibernated. There were butterflies and bumblebees; there were newborn calves in the fields and leaves on the trees.

“I was hidden under the floorboards in a barn with the grainery reserves. We had plenty left over from the harvest, but I was small enough that I had enough space. I stayed there for three days while the men were there. My nightmares caused thunderstorms. They knew I was there – or, rather, they knew _someone_ was there. Someone malicious and evil and violent. They didn’t know it was me.”

As a child, Merlin had had overlarge ears and overlarge feet and a habit of summoning things to him instead of walking over simply because of how often he tripped up. He’d told his friend Will that it was like having lots of arms, like a sea creature of legend, and it just felt natural to use them.

“My mother had told me, of course, that magic was illegal and unsafe and all the rest of it. But it felt like being told it was illegal to use my right hand.” He gave a little laugh, a little more genuine than before now that they hadn’t killed him yet. “You’d all be clumsy too if someone would chop your head off for using your right hand. The instinct doesn’t really go away.”

He blinked, his smile turning to a frown as he dragged himself back to his story. “The Bloodcloaks took Marvin, in the end,” he said. “I don’t know if that really needed saying. They weren’t going to leave until they had someone in their cage to give to Uther. Marvin was the oldest in the village. I hope it was his decision – I like to think that it was. The Pyre seems awful enough when it feels worth it, and he saved my life.”

“When-” Arthur croaked, breaking the group’s silence. “What do you mean ‘when it feels worth it’?”

Merlin curled his fingers into the table, watching his fingernails scratch the wood. “This would be worth it. If I can’t… if I can’t explain myself now, when you’re King and ready to listen and asking for opinions. If I can’t do it now then I was never going to. This is my best chance. So… so it would be worth it, if it changes your mind five years down the line.

“I just hope that it wasn’t too bad for Marvin, I mean – that he chose it and it was easier for him because of it.”

“Merlin-”

“I’m not done. I- just let me finish, before you decide anything.”

Arthur leaned back in his seat, gesturing for Merlin to speak.

He paused to gather his thoughts again, then, “So Marvin was dead. For me. Because of me. Because of my magic – and that couldn’t go to waste. If the Bloodcloaks had come back and realised they’d been tricked, the whole village would have been in danger. And Marvin was dead and it was my fault for not understanding.

“I still didn’t,” he added. “I made the crops better and kept everyone from getting sick and made the village pretty. Magic made me feel warm and right and good. There isn’t a feeling like it, and I was helping people and mother always taught me to help the village and to be kind to everyone. I didn’t understand that what I was doing was bad and wrong and dangerous, just because I was using my other hand to do it.

“So my mother had to teach me. Whenever I used magic,” he swallowed and took a breath, clasping his hands so they rubbed over the opposite wrists. “Whenever I used magic she would burn me with a hot poker.”

The table was a noisy kind of silent. Their eyes itched on his wrists; on the scars he’d smoothed out with a glance years ago.

“In the evenings,” he said, when he felt the silence stretching. “She would tell me stories about the Pyre, about what Uther did to the sorcerers he caught. Iron cells and binding marks carved into the skin and slow deaths. She hated all of it as much as I did - more, even. I know she never _wanted_ to hurt me, but...

"I still don’t know how much of her stories were true, but that was never the point. The point was to make me terrified of the thing that made me happy.”

Gwaine growled from across the table. “You were scared of your right hand.”

Merlin snorted. “You’d be too if having one meant the Pyre.”

“Did you manage to stop?” Leon interjected.

Merlin was gratified to see a few annoyed expressions at Leon’s question.

“I managed to put a stopper in my magic. It was like putting a dam on an ever-growing river,” he explained. “Eventually the dam was going to break. And the torrent would go everywhere. I couldn’t control it.”

Merlin grimaced. “I figured it out eventually. I would get sick when it was about to overflow, and then I would go out into the forest and the trees would grow taller. And then we would chop down the trees and disguise the stumps so no one noticed they only had a one ring in them. Now that I’m here I try to focus on the plants and herbs Gaius needs and pick them as soon as I’m done.”

Arthur coughed. “He’s been healing people with enchanted plants?”

“I sometimes boost his potions when he’s not looking.” Merlin was not repentant. “What I can do is not a bad thing. It could be a bad thing, if I wanted it to be, but I’d much rather use it to help people.”

“You don’t think it’s going to corrupt you?” Gwen asked, her voice a painful mix of hope and fear.

“I was using magic in my crib,” Merlin said. “If it was going to corrupt me, it would have by now. Morgana,” the table winced at her name, “was afraid. She didn’t have a whole village protecting her until she could learn to hide it. She couldn’t trust her father would protect her no matter what – she couldn’t confide in anyone, couldn’t risk letting anything slip.

Arthur leaned forwards, mouth opening.

Merlin cut him off before he could begin. “Uther would have killed her, Arthur, and he would have called it mercy. I could have saved her, if I’d been there for her as she needed, but I was afraid. One wrong slip and I’m on the pyre – a horrible invention already, but a far worse beast when it’s haunted your nightmares since childhood.”

Arthur swallowed. “We’re the boogeyman.”

Merlin nodded. “Morgana is living proof of what that fear turns people into. What happened to me is what happened to the lucky sorcerers. Most of us lost all our kin, lost our spell books and our culture and our religion. Curses run rampant and we hide in caves and never know our families. Every sorcerer you have fought has been utterly desperate to not die, to allow their children and their culture to not die. The ones you haven’t met have been too afraid to take action.”

“Is this you taking action, then?” Arthur gave him a half-smirk which fell flat. “Why are you doing this? You could have done plenty for your people from your position, but you’re just… here.”

“As you said,” Merlin smiled. “I’m taking action. I’m doing as prophesy orders and my heart guides. I am protecting you, and teaching you, and you will be a great King. I want there to be peace, and I believe this is the way to achieve it.”

**Author's Note:**

> if anyone wants to drop a comment or some kudos id appreciate it  
> 


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